Ampersand Media

4 Trends From the 2017 “Instagram Best Nine”

By Christie Jones

As we approach the end of 2017, you may start to see (or already have) a trend on Instagram: the 2017 Best Nine. This is a collage of each accounts’ nine best photos, aka the photos that have gotten the most likes! The photo below is an example from our very own Ampersand Instagram account.

This is a super fun way to look back at 2017 and get a little nostalgic as we head into a new year. As social media marketers, our Ampersand team couldn’t help but take notice of a few tell-tale trends from 2017 as we found out the best nine for ourselves, and our clients.

These were the posting trends that popped up for us:

1) Vulnerability

When you share your heart and your story, chances are there are many other people out there who can relate. Many of the photos that ranked the highest showed this vulnerability… whether it be a heartfelt post on a graduation day, a private and personal experience, or just a really good story. The key takeaway is that people want to hear from the true you!

2) People

Just like how people want to hear from the true you, they also want to SEE you! We know that photos with people’s faces statistically draw us in more on social media, but this years’ Top Nine proved that in spades throughout all of our accounts.

3) Perfection = not important

Some of the photos that made the grid were nowhere near professional quality… however, they showed the story, heart, or people mentioned above. Sure, as a visual platform the more high quality of photos you can get, the better, but this trend shows that authentic and relatable posts beat out the need to have beautiful imagery.

4) Relatable events

Last year on Vancouver Island we had an uncharacteristic amount of snow. Which as we know, is pretty at first… and then gets old pretty dang quick! Everybody living in this area (or lets face it, anywhere in Canada) was feeling this snow angst. This is one example of how touching on a popular topic that people have strong feelings about can garner, well… a lot of popularity on a post! It certainly did for ours.

How to find your own Best Nine:

All you have to do to find out your own 2017 Instagram highlights is head to their website, enter in your Instagram handle (just the username, NOT the whole URL that starts with www.) and let them generate the results! From there you can save the image, and repost it on your account. For us, it took a few minutes to get our personalized grid because of the MASS amount of people trying to find out their highlights at the same time, so you may need to practice patience while they make their magic happen.

Whether you discover your 2017 Best Nine as a way to look back over your successes of the year, or uncover themes from your collage to bring into your 2018 as we did with ours, we hope you all take a moment to appreciate the experiences that 2017 brought, before the bright and shiny new year begins!